Harmony glanced down into the half-light of the street. Georgiev, behind her, watched her, breathless, expectant. Harmony drew in her head.
“Only a man in a green hat,” she said. “And down the street a group of soldiers.”
“Ah!”
The situation dawned on the girl then, at least partially.
“They are coming for you?”
“It is possible. But there are many soldiers in Vienna.”
“And I with the pigeon—Oh, it’s too horrible! Herr Georgiev, stay here in this room. Lock the door. Monia will say that it is mine—”
“Ah no, Fraulein! It is quite hopeless. Nor is it a matter of the pigeon. It is war, Fraulein. Do not distress yourself. It is but a matter of—imprisonment.”
“There must be something I can do,” desperately. “I hear them below. Is there no way to the roof, no escape?”
“None, Fraulein. It was an oversight. War is not my game; I am a man of peace. You have been very kind to me, Fraulein. I thank you.”
“You are not going down!”
“Pardon, but it is better so. Soldiers they are of the provinces mostly, and not for a lady to confront.”
“They are coming up!”
He listened. The clank of scabbards against the stone stairs was unmistakable. The little Georgiev straightened, threw out his chest, turned to descend, faltered, came back a step or two.
His small black eyes were fixed on Harmony’s face.
“Fraulein,” he said huskily, “you are very lovely. I carry always in my heart your image. Always so long as I live. Adieu.”
He drew his heels together, gave a stiff little bow and was gone down the staircase. Harmony was frightened, stricken. She collapsed in a heap on the floor of her room, her fingers in her ears. But she need not have feared. The little Georgiev made no protest, submitted to the inevitable like a gentleman and a soldier, went out of her life, indeed, as unobtrusively as he had entered it.
The carrier pigeon preened itself comfortably on the edge of the washstand. Harmony ceased her hysterical crying at last and pondered what was best to do. Monia was still breakfasting so incredibly brief are great moments. After a little thought Harmony wrote a tiny message, English, German, and French, and inclosed it in the brass tube.
“The Herr Georgiev has been arrested,” she wrote. An hour later the carrier rose lazily from the windowsill, flapped its way over the church roof and disappeared, like Georgiev, out of her life. Grim-visaged war had touched her and passed on.
The incident was not entirely closed, however. A search of the building followed the capture of the little spy. Protesting tenants were turned out, beds were dismantled, closets searched, walls sounded for hidden hollows. In one room on Harmony’s floor was found stored a quantity of ammunition.
It was when the three men who had conducted the search had finished, when the boxes of ammunition had been gathered in the hall, and the chattering sewing-girls had gone back to work, that Harmony, on her way to her dismantled room, passed through the upper passage.
She glanced down the staircase where little Georgiev had so manfully descended.
“I carry always in my heart your image. Always so long as I live.”
The clatter of soldiers on their way down to the street came to her ears; the soft cooing of the pigeons, the whirr of sewing-machines from the workroom. The incident was closed, except for the heap of ammunition boxes on the landing, guarded by an impassive soldier.
Harmony glanced at him. He was eying her steadily, thumbs in, heels in, toes out, chest out. Harmony put her hand to her heart.
“You!” she said.
The conversation of a sentry, save on a holiday is, “Yea, yea,” and “Nay, nay.”
“Yes, Fraulein.”
Harmony put her hands together, a little gesture of appeal, infinitely touching.
“You will not say that you have found, have seen me?”
“No, Fraulein.”
It was in Harmony’s mind to ask all her hungry heart craved to learn—of Peter, of Jimmy, of the Portier, of anything that belonged to the old life in the Siebensternstrasse. But there was no time. The sentry’s impassive face became rigid; he looked through her, not at her. Harmony turned.
The man in the green hat was coming up the staircase. There was no further chance to question. The sentry was set to carrying the boxes down the staircase.
Full morning now, with the winter sun shining on the beggars in the market, on the crowds in the parks, on the flower sellers in the Stephansplatz; shining on Harmony’s golden head as she bent over a bit of chiffon, on the old milkwoman carrying up the whitewashed staircase her heavy cans of milk; on the carrier pigeon winging its way to the south; beating in through bars to the exalted face of Herr Georgiev; resting on Peter’s drooping shoulders, on the neglected mice and the wooden soldier, on the closed eyes of a sick child—the worshiped sun, peering forth— the golden window of the East.
CHAPTER XXVI
